Stop adding new stuff to a city?

[Zarty]

Sorry, I know I'm not using the right terminology but when you select something to be built for a city, you're automatically promted to build something else when that 'thing' (eg. worker, warrior, market or whatever) has completed. That's fine but I'm trying to go with some strategy advice to create more specialised cities such as Military, Culture, Science/Commerce and it reaches a point during the game where you would like to stop building stuff rather than create a city that has every possible 'thing' that is available. How do I stop a city from forcing me to build stuff when I just want to draw a line on what has already been built?

Thanks in advance,
Zarty

 

[LAnkou]

the best to do is to build beakers, gold or culture...

By the way, why can't you build espionnage point?

 

[Gwynnja]

Ctrl-O opens up the options screen. There is a box you can uncheck that says something along the lines of "tell sid to leave me alone and let me build whatever I want." After that you won't get all the unneeded advice.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Hold down alt, click your best unit a bunch of times. They'll pour out every few turns without pausing to ask you for a new build.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Hold down alt, click your best unit a bunch of times. They'll pour out every few turns without pausing to ask you for a new build.

You only need to click once if you're using alt. Alt chains the unit to be produced forever unless instructed otherwise.

Also useful is shift, to queue different units or buildings up. Control will put them in front of something building, rather than behind, IIRC. This stuff saves a lot of time...

 

[Zarty]

Thanks,
The Alt click thing on the builds is going to help. Isn't there any way of just stopping the builds for a city? Gwynnja, I didn't mean the suggestions that pop up but I expect that I'll want to turn them off at some point too so thanks.

Cheers,
Zarty

 

[Jet]

There's no reason not to build anything at all. That's a waste of hammers. The game doesn't let you do it anyway (except rarely, due to bugs.) If you don't want to build a building or unit, then you should build wealth, research, or culture, as the first reply said.

 

[Zarty]

I'm confused. When I play CivIV, each city I create will present me with a list of 'things' and I can't just skip it... I have to select something to build. As soon as that item has been built (eg. Stable, Granery, Warrior, Bank, etc), the list pops up again and another item on the list has to be chosen. Because I'm forced to choose to build something for each city, toward the end of a game, every city is pretty much maxed out for development. So, if you want a city to stay fairly small just to turn out military units, how is this achieved? When you say 'should build wealth, research, or culture'... I really don't understand how this stop that list of things to build appearing? Can you be more specif?

thanks,
Zarty

 

[Solid]

If you bulir wealth, culture or beakers, you won´t get promted to buld anythinge else. cause the city will continue build it until you want to build something else.

 

[Gwynnja]

If you bulir wealth, culture or beakers, you won´t get promted to buld anythinge else. cause the city will continue build it until you want to build something else.

That's almost right, but if you choose to dedicate all of the city's hammers towards culture, you will be prompted after the next border pop.

 

[Zarty]

Ok, so can you give me some examples of how you 'buld wealth, culture or beakers'?

Thanks,
Zarty

 

[Perugia]

I'm confused. When I play CivIV, each city I create will present me with a list of 'things' and I can't just skip it... I have to select something to build. As soon as that item has been built (eg. Stable, Granery, Warrior, Bank, etc), the list pops up again and another item on the list has to be chosen. Because I'm forced to choose to build something for each city, toward the end of a game, every city is pretty much maxed out for development. So, if you want a city to stay fairly small just to turn out military units, how is this achieved? When you say 'should build wealth, research, or culture'... I really don't understand how this stop that list of things to build appearing? Can you be more specif?

thanks,
Zarty

As one of the earlier posters said if you press alt and click on a unit the city will churn them out without a pop up. Also if you use shift or control to add items to the queue you wont be disturbed by a pop up until all queued items are complete at which point you can create a new queue.

 

[v8_mark]

To build wealth, research or culture you have to have discovered Currency, Alphabet or Drama respectively. Assuming you have one of these three technologies, when you finish building something and are prompted to build something else, scroll down to the bottom of the list and the little symbols should be there for you.

If you haven't yet discovered these techs, it's too early to be building nothing! Build another settler, or another worker.

 

[Groogaroo]

Ok, so can you give me some examples of how you 'buld wealth, culture or beakers'?

Thanks,
Zarty

To build commerce, culture or beakers just go into the city screen, at the bottom are all the builds you can pick for the city, scroll down through the list and pick one of the symbols (commerce, culture, science).

Alternativly the next time you finish a build and you get the pop up to choose the next build scroll down to the bottom of the list and pick one of the symbols.

You need Alphabet before you can build beakers
Currency before you can build commerce
Music before you can build culture

You will still get the suggestion popups unless you disable them.

EDIT - Darn V8 beat me to the punch!

 

[Zarty]

Now I understand thanks. I was selecting these but probably not often enough.

 

[kazapp]

I believe the answer Zarty is looking for is this:

Civilization doesn't allow you to not build anything in a city.

Building science, commerce or culture all have a prerequisite tech. Before you have any of these, you're correct, there's no way to avoid having to build "something" (like a granary or an archer).

This means that if you overexpand in the early game, you can end up with situations where you have nothing but units to build, but you have all the units you need and more importantly can afford already.

But you're still forced to keep building. This can lead to situations where you need to disband brand new unit after brand new unit. Of course I agree this feels like a bug in the game.

This (and now I'm speculating) hasn't been deemed a big problem, because when you're at 0% science and with no money to pay for unit upkeep (which is where the "forced unit builds" is felt the most) it's probably time to resign the game anyway.

That is, if you routinely end up with nothing but units you can't afford, it's probably time to change your play style, go down a difficulty level, or both!

 

[Feanor01]

The computer will prompt and suggest you build certain buildings even when your city is in the middle of producing somethign else. For instance, if your city is unhealthy teh computer may suggest building an aqueduct or grannery, unhappy a collusium or temple. If your city is producign a large amount of beakers or coins the computer may prompt you to build a library or market. These are all just suggestions, and you do not have to follow them. In fact, I think you can turn off these suggestions.

 

[Beamup]

Stepping back a bit, getting into a situation where you don't have anything useful to build in a city means you should reevaluate your strategy - in particular, your tech pace. You should be able to research quickly enough to keep your cities busy building things you need them to have.

 

[v8_mark]

...just to add to that, if you don't want to build anything, you can always reassign the citizens so that they're working tiles for maximum food or commerce (rather than maximum hammers), if you have tiles farmed or cottaged.

 

[kazapp]

But the short answer is "no, you can't stop it".

The longer answer is "you can't stop it though you can mess up your cities to virtually halt them. But you're doing something wrong if you need to". At least, this is probably Firaxis explanation why there's no "shut down city" button